SeanC

Most obviously I identified the contrast in Viserys’ reactions.

The problem with that is that nobody reacts like Rhaenyra has demanded torture. Particularly Viserys, who is later incredulous at the suggestion of maiming Lucerys.

That’s what it means in the book. Based on the show usage, I don’t think that is what the line was intended to mean (compare the reaction to Rhaenyra’s line to the reaction to Alicent’s later demand).

WandaVision wasn't even finished when they started making Multiverse of Madness.

Dude is getting a bit full of himself there, even if they weren't bastards, Laena's daughters would be ahead of him in the succession. Laenor evidently not a big fan of his parents.

A good weekend for Canadian dancers, with Lajoie & Lagha winning their first senior medal (gold) at the Nepela Memorial and Bashynska & Beaumont winning the first Polish JPG. The former are doing the Cha Cha Slide in the RD, heh. Bashynska & Beaumont's new Red Violin free dance is lovely.

He'd be shocked by that because it's not how Westerosi inheritance normally works. Rhea's heir should be whoever her closest blood relation is. Farewell to Milly Alcock and Emily Carey. I'll miss them both.

Since they aren't on good terms with the Velaryons, presumably Viserys wanted to make a big show of it.

Unless the show has a really good explanation next week, the change to the Cole/Lonmouth fight is the dumbest thing I've seen on the show by a wide margin. There is no way that that wouldn't lead to Cole being immediately executed.

Laenor wasn’t a cuckold, he seemingly had no interest in sleeping with Rhaenyra and was fine claiming Harwin’s children as his own. The Velaryons appear to have accepted this situation and remedied the Driftmark inheritance issue by betrothing the two eldest boys to Laena’s daughters.

I'd call it comparable to the first film in terms of quality. I'll say no more, for the time being.

I’m seeing the 9 AM screening on the 11th.

The Stepstones conflict logistically has various issues, but I'd say in fairness to the creators that they inherited this problem from GRRM, namely, that it's really difficult to invent compelling scenarios for how anybody can given the dragonriders a real fight without their own magical weapons. The tourney in the premiere and the hunt here are GRRM getting the full-sized versions of things that he wanted for the first season of Game of Thrones.

That was Ser Laenor, Corlys and Rhaenys' son, who we saw in the war council scenes earlier. He can ride a dragon because his mother is a Targaryen.

I don't think that's true. His decision was to let Corlys and Daemon wage their private little war (which, in Daemon's case especially, was what he wanted anyway). The question of intervention only really became pressing when it looked like they were on the verge of failure.

The international debut of Japan’s newest wunderkind, who was even named after Mao Asada (she also shares with her namesake the lot of being narrowly ineligible for the next Olympics).

South Korea's Canadian import ice dancers, who won gold at the first JGP. Getting the mandatory Yuna Kim tribute out of the way.

What do you mean by sets being recycled? The series is set in many of the same key locations as GOT, obviously the Red Keep and Dragonstone are going to look architecturally similar to how they looked in the later series. In any case, these aren't literally the same sets, they're new sets built to resemble the old ones. He wants to go fight as well, it's not like he's not eager to take risks in this scenario. It's far from a situation that only benefits him, either. He then went on to try to subtly needle him out of accepting the offer, under the guise of concern for his emotional state. I don't really see the comparison here. Corlys was presumably in the capital still. He wasn't asked to go on that mission.

I don’t think it can really be called scheming to make a formal betrothal offer. That’s all very above board by this society’s norms.

Milly Alcock is the young Rhaenyra; D'Arcy is playing the older Rhaenyra.

This is an interesting case of how adaptation choices and casting affects the way things are perceived. In the books, Viserys was 29 at the time of his remarriage, while Alicent was 18. The choice of her over Laena was very expressly about wanting to marry an adult woman who was relatively close to him in age, rather than a child (which he had already done previously at his family's direction with Aemma). Whereas here, several different changes have been made: - it's not clear how old this Viserys is supposed to be, but clearly he's older than his book counterpart, going by, among other things, that they've aged up Rhaenyra and cast 48-year-old Paddy Considine in the role. - Alicent has actually (seemingly) been aged down from her book counterpart, and turned into a peer of Rhaenyra, a relationship that didn't exist in the source material because Rhaenyra was nine years old.

It's Nalini's house. But the grandmother is the elder of the family so she's afforded considerable deference.

US dancers Eva Pate and Logan Bye are engaged.

Hey, next you're going to say that Otto sending his daughter to the king's chambers immediately afterward to start the process of making her his new wife was too forward.

I enjoyed the return to court politics, something that D&D were never good at writing when they didn't have GRRM's source material to fall back on (though admittedly, that's a long list of things). Making Rhaenyra and Alicent the same age (and friends) is obviously the biggest change relative to the central premise, but that makes sense in terms of fleshing out character arcs from the rough plot synopsis.